Chapter 3: Who Are Today's Students in a Diverse Society

The Start of Bilingual Education

Issues involving bilingual education are not new to society and have been discussed for hundreds of years. The state of Ohio was the first state to adopt a bilingual education law in 1839 for German-English instruction, but Ohio would not be the last. Several states followed suit including Louisiana for French-English instruction in 1847 and New Mexico in 1850 for Spanish-English instruction. By the end of the 1800’s, a dozen states had enacted their own laws regarding bilingual education in other diverse languages such as Norwegian, Czech, and Cherokee to name a few. At the beginning of the 1900’s, 4% of American children were recieving part or all of their instruction in German. This percentage is higher than all the children we have enrolled in Spanish-English instruction today.
This trend toward bilingual education began to change during the First World War when people began to question the loyalty of those that didn’t speak English. Bilingual education programs were replaced by English-only instruction laws as a way to “Americanize” the children that didn’t speak English. English-only instruction became the norm for limited English proficient or LEP students until these students began to fall far behind their English speaking classmates and drop out of school.
To help solve this growing problem, the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 was enacted. This act provided federal funding so schools could begin teaching children not only in English but their primary language as well. Individual states began to enact their own bilingual education laws after the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 was passed. The Supreme Court case, Lau v. Nichols, was an extremely important turning point. The case required schools to take affirmative steps to help non-English speaking children overcome language barriers which were holding them back, however the federal government didn’t mandate how these children should be taught. On the other hand, these laws do require that non-English speaking students have the same equal opportunities as their English speaking classmates.

Website:
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/12_03/langhst.shtml